How to Rank a Potato on Page 1 for “Gaming Console”

Using Reddit to Rank a Potato on Page 1 of Google across the World.

A recent Reddit callout has been able to rank a potato image on page 1 of Google across multiple geographic locations all due to the power of the community driving the viral nature of the thread.

Reddit the self pronounced “front page of the web” has been a massive platform for users from the early years of the web. Its community is vast and spans mulitple intertest and following all contained within sub-reddits. These sub-reddits all contain strcit protocoils and proceedures strcilty administered by the moderator gate keepers. Crooss them at your peril.

Content shared within these reddit thread have the ability to go viral within the space of a very short time given the nature of the community. Sometines threads started within a sub-reddit break main stream and make it on to the front page due to the sharing nature of the post. I think you get the picture it is an increadible powerful platform from community perspective. The power and voice of reddit also seems to feed outwardly with Google news syndication reddit posts into it’s news platform.

A recent dare (experiment) by DANNYonPC has shown exactly how the power of Reddit can influence Google and not necessary in a relevant way. Danny posted a thread that was bound to get a response.

The challenge originally was to show (rank) the potato within image search for ‘Gaming Console’. In fact within 9 hours of the post going life it had over 4126 upvotes with over 480 comments from people enjoying the thread. Some have show great passion around the cause and from an SEO’s perspective the thread has shown great relevance to the cause, especially these contributions.

All in jest, but you could argue, totally on topic.

As i said before, the dare was originally posted with the intention to rank the potato within the image search feature, however it has gone one better and is now sitting proudly at the top of Page 1 of Google due to it being syndicated via the Google News platform.

United States

Lets all rejoice the power of people and potatoes.

No doubt really given that the US of A is the home of the Reddit platform. My curiosity drove me to check what was going on globally, assuming each countries news stories are underpinned by local content not just global events.

I have checked globally via local proxies and this is how it stands within the major countries for Google.

United Kingdom

Australia

Germany

Changed my browser language settings so as to be totally German. No spuds…..

Sweden

Changed my browser language settings so as to be totally Swedish. No spuds…..

Changed my browser language settings so as to read English content. Bingo POTATO…..

FRANCE

In fact to save you the pain of duplication i observed the same results with the French search results as well. Local language browser settings turned on, no potato, English language turned on, potato identified.

That single Reddit thread had the power to be syndicated across multiple regions within the news feature, on page 1. POWERFUL STUFF

What i find interesting is that Google is syndicating Reddit post in the first instance. Does it potentially syndicate the platform as a whole? I can understand the principle behind it because sometimes articles will appear first on Reddit before anywhere else and from that gain a viral nature to them. But Reddit also has an anti-establishment nature to it and if a practical joke is going to be had, it will be also be also be launched on Reddit, as the potato gaming console demonstrates.

In fact it has been taken to a rather sinister level because now people are trying to rank a Nazi flag for the term ‘COMCAST’ and the upvotes are pouring in.

Don’t think this one will work…….

Overall, jokes aside this has reinforced yet again how powerful Reddit is and the influence it can have from an SEO perspective.

Reddit needs to be part of your SEO Strategy.

PS. When the POTATO gaming console is launched please let me know where i can get one, they look “AWESOME”.